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Monday, 9 April 2012

Last chance to sign 'Pause' Willesden Green Development petition

From Kilburn Times

Today is the last chance to sign our e-petition on the Willesden Green Redevelopment. Follow this LINK to sign.

THE FULL PETITION TEXT

We the undersigned petition the council to Pause the Willesden Green Library Centre regeneration plans to allow for full consultation with residents in order to ascertain their views on how the area should be developed and the amenities that should be provided or retained.

Brent Council is handing over public land worth £10.4 million to a property developer in exchange for rebuilding the Willesden Library Centre. The original 1894 library building on the High Road will be demolished, The Willesden Bookshop is likely to be driven out of business, the public car park will be reduced to 8 spaces and a children’s play area will be lost. Over 18 months, three five-storey blocks of 90+ luxury flats will be built behind the existing Library Centre.

We all want a thriving, welcoming and dynamic library and cultural centre, but the current deal has been sealed with virtually no public consultation and very little available information, ignoring the wishes of over a thousand local residents who have expressed opposition to these plans in two Brent e-petitions.

While the developers get a healthy profit from the sale of luxury flats and Brent councillors get some fancy new offices, the cultural and financial cost to rate-paying citizens is disproportionately high. It smacks of ‘profits before people’.

Borough residents need to have a say in the content and design of the library centre redevelopment, but we have not yet been given the chance to do so.

The Council says: Plans for the development of the library centre were raised at the executive committee in February 2011, and quickly followed by two public consultations to ‘test the market’. The council had to abide by commercial confidentiality, so no detailed plans could be made public until a deal was signed with the developer on 15 February 2012.

We say: Did you know about this in 2011? Not a single local resident or tradesperson we spoke to knew about the plans until Jan 2012, and only then through word of mouth. The Feb 2011 consultations were conducted with, respectively, 5 and then 7 people. One person present recounted that they were asked for their opinion, then shown plans for the centre that were drawn up before the meeting. This does not conform to the generally understood definition of a ‘consultation’

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DOWNLOAD OUR FIRST LEAFLET - GET THE WORD OUT

Our first leaflet explains what is happening in the Willesden Green Redevelopment and poses the key questions.
Please download it and distribute to your friends, neighbours, local shops and anyone you think may be interested.
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WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY REGENERATION REPORTS

Contact Keep Willesden Green

keepwillesdengreen@hotmail.co.uk

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Welcome to Keep Willesden Green

Willesden Green is facing big changes and we want to make sure that people who live or work in the area have their say.

There are plans to demolish the Willesden Green Library and replace it with a Cultural Centre. In the process the valued Willesden Bookshop will lose its premises and the locally cherished old Victorian Willesden Central Library will be demolished.

The new development will have a smaller footprint than the current Willesden Library Centre and new housing will be developed around the site.

The rare and valued open space at the front of the current building will be reduced.

The plans released by the architects have received a less than rapturous reception from local people.